Description of the Report

This report counts only documents of the following type(s): design patents
granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during the period
01/01/1977 - 12/31/2013.
These profiled documents hereafter will be referred to as "patents".

PATENTS INCLUDED IN THIS REPORT

This Patent Technology Monitoring Team (PTMT) Report profiles patent activity for
U.S. patents granted between 01/01/1977 and 12/31/2013.
The source of the data used for this report is the TAF
database maintained by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

PARTS A1 AND A2 (IF INCLUDED)

Parts A1 and A2, if included, present tables which profile, by
number and percent, the activity of the specified patents. Annual totals may be provided
for some years and a consolidated year total also may be provided. Part A1 presents data
by year of patent grant ("Patents Granted As Distributed By Year of Patent Grant"). Part A2
redistributes patent grant data by year of patent application, i.e., the year in
which each patent application was filed ("Patents Granted As Distributed By Year of
Patent Application"). Patent data as shown in the "Pre YYYY" column
(where "YYYY" is a four-digit year) correspond to activity in the specified period
prior to "YYYY".

In Tables A1-1a and A2-1a, the totals are broken down by
origin (patent origin is determined by the residence of the first-named
inventor), either U.S. or foreign. Separate counts are displayed for many of the
foreign countries receiving the most granted patents during the period. In
Tables A1-1b and A2-1b, patent counts are displayed according
to general category of ownership, e.g., corporate-owned, government-owned, or
individual-owned.

Patent ownership information reflects ownership at the time of patent grant
and does not include subsequent changes in ownership. If more than one assignee
(owner entity) was declared at the time of grant, the patent is attributed to
the first-named assignee. The U.S. and Foreign Corporations ownership categories
count predominantly corporate patents; however, patents assigned to other
organizations such as small businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities,
etc. are also included in this category. While U.S. Government patent ownership
includes only patents granted to the Federal Government, no such distinction is
made for Foreign Government ownership patents.

Please note that U.S. origin patents may have foreign category ownership and
that foreign origin patents may have U.S. category ownership. Therefore, the
patents having U.S.category ownership (or foreign category ownership) do not necessarily
correspond to the patents having U.S. origin (or foreign origin) and the sum of
U.S. category ownership patents (or foreign category ownership patents) will not
equal the sum of U.S. origin patents (or foreign origin patents).

Also, please note that patent documents in the TAF database are limited to
utility patents granted no earlier than January 1963 and to other document types (i.e.,
design, plant, and reissue patents, statutory invention registrations, and
defensive publications) granted no earlier than 1977.

PART B (IF INCLUDED)

Part B is a listing of national and international organizations (i.e.,
corporations, universities, government agencies, etc.) that have received U.S.
patents during the profiled time period. The availability of
assigned ownership data in the TAF database, as displayed in Part B,
begins in 1969 for utility patent grants and in 1977 for design, plant, and
reissue patents, statutory invention registrations, and defensive publications.
The listing is limited to organizations receiving 50
or more patents during the period. This minimum number is identified in the title heading
of the table. Part B ranks these organizations in terms of total patents
granted for the period and displays their annual patent activity for the most recent
period. Patent grants may be distributed in two ways, by year of grant and/or by
year of patent application. Data lines for each listed organization may distribute
the counts of patent grants by the year of grant and/or by
the year in which the patented applications were filed. Please note that in some
reports, only one of these two data lines may be displayed. Information regarding
patent ownership reflects ownership at the time of patent grant. Although a
substantial effort has been made to combine name variations into a single
organizational name, many organizations continue to have patents listed under
more than one name.

Patent data, as shown in the "Pre YYYY" column (where "YYYY"
is a four-digit year), correspond to activity in the specified period prior to
"YYYY".

DATA DISTRIBUTION BY YEAR OF GRANT AND BY YEAR OF
APPLICATION

Other Considerations

DATA FOR THOSE
APPLICATIONS WHICH WERE FILED BUT NEVER ISSUED (ROUGHLY 20% OF TOTAL DESIGN FILINGS)
ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THIS REPORT.

Since the average time period between filing for a patent and the issuing of the patent
(i.e., the patent's "pendency" to issue) is now about 15 months (for design patents), the patent
grant data, as distributed by year of patent application, are incomplete for the most recent years
displayed in the report.* This is because the patents included in this report are limited to
those granted during the specified time period. However, a significant number of the
applications filed during the most recent years of this time period were still pending
at the end of the period. While many of these applications eventually will be patented, they will
not be patented until sometime following the end of the period displayed in this report.

Patented application data are of significant value since the date an
application was filed more accurately reflects when the design was
developed. Additionally, fluctuations in data based on application date are much
more likely to reflect changes in design activity since, for the most
part, such fluctuations would be immune from changes in U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) processing such as occurred in years such as 1986 and 2005 when
the USPTO issued fewer patents than would have normally been expected due to
administrative reasons. Note that a patent's "pendency" can be quite
variable from one patent to another, thereby affecting the date of patent grant.
Such variation in pendency is determined by many factors, including PTO workload
(which may vary between design categories), budget and manpower levels, patent printing
schedules, etc. Please note that other types of patent documents such as utility
patents, plant patents, reissue patents, statutory invention registrations,and
defensive publications may have average pendency periods that differ somewhat
from the pendency period for design patents.

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For example, in this report profiling design patents granted through December 2013, patent
grant data, as distributed by year of application, are approximately 94% complete for
design patent applications filed in 2011, 62% complete for applications filed in 2012,
and 7% complete for applications filed in 2013; data are essentially complete for
applications filed prior to 2011.

Report Printing and the Use of Spreadsheet Software

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